Wasted Step?

[Inkguy]

I was curious as to opinions on a step I read about, implemented, and found that my beer improved quite a bit, both in cleaner flavor and clarity.
The step is this:
After the boil, I use a chiller to get the wort to 80 degrees or so, then strain it into my bottling bucket, where it sits from 2-6 hours, depending on season, hour, temperature, etc.
At that point, using the spigot and racking hose, I pitch the yeast and run the beer into the fermenter, leaving the half inch or so of trub and hop particles in the bucket.
I can't remember the exact argument given other than it having to do with proteins and hop particles affecting flavors and yeast.
All I know is I noticed a difference and have done it since. And now, after reading the thread on skipping secondary, I am curious to see if my beers improve even more, given the arguments for tighter yeast cakes and fewer off-flavors from maximizing yeast activity.

Does any one else do this? Papazian made mention of it, but said if you can't be bothered, don't do it.

 

[eastoak]

i don't doubt that you have noticed a difference after doing this but i do doubt it has anything to do with trub or hops. there are way too many brewers, commercial and home brewers, who don't bother with this and someone would have noticed the bad effects. there are people that do try to filter that stuff, it certainly does no harm. 2-6 hrs is a risky amount of time for me to leave my wort un pitched since wort gets colonized pretty easily by wild yeast or bacteria floating around the air. pitching quickly gets a large colony of yeast in there to beat out everything else.

 

[MeBrew2]

If you add something like super Irish moss and use a wort chiller/ice water bath, you can reach fermentation temp within half hour max. That rapid cooling along with the Irish moss causes tons of fallout in that short period of time. After siphoning off my last porter I tilted the kettle and snapped this pic.


I then racked to secondary and by the time I bottled there was less sediment in the bottom than would be in a small yeast starter.

I recently started asking the same questions and after listening to a podcast which compares several batches where half was secondaried and the other half was left in the primary. They noticed a difference in clarity in the secondary BUT the one that stayed in the primary was just as clear when poured from the bottle.

They split hairs about flavor differences and agreed they'd hardly be able to pick the odd man in a 3 sample test.

It concluded that transferring off trub to secondary (didn't mention siphoning brew kettle but it's the same fallout) doesn't improve the clarity or flavor of the final beer but will help you avoid sediment in your bottles.

To me this is important because my place is small so I often travel with bottles or a party pig and I find it absolutely essential in having clear beer when you get there to have siphoned from kettle and transferring to secondary.

One of the podcast guys said his takeaway was: use secondary when bottling not necessary when kegging.

It was noted that when skipping secondary the first two glasses of beer from a keg are trub and yeast.

Current conclusion? Siphoning off kettle and using secondary are about sediment in the bottom of your final product. Sure the commercial breweries don't do it but then a lot of them filter or centrifuge and use other methods of clarifying.

 

[MeBrew2]

One thing they mention which I have considered is skipping siphoning from kettle, not transferring to secondary but cold crashing before siphoning to bottling bucket or keg from the primary

The cold crash may eliminate the 'need'
To siphon from kettle and eliminate the 'need' to use secondary and still ending up with little or no more sediment. Imagine how clear your starter is after cold crash...